The long march to liberation
When the SS evacuated the camp in January 1945 as the Soviet army started approaching, Bega and the other inmates were taken briefly to Bergen-Belsen and then to a town whose name she no longer remembers. “They took us to a big building with many floors and they took my sister away and probably killed her. They'd wake us up every morning and take us to this place where there was a big wall and order us to throw rocks at each other. It was May and it was very cold, and they were making us throw rocks just to make us do something. In the meantime, the Germans had started retreating.”
She doesn't remember the date when they left the town, but she remembers marching for 22 days in the cold. “We'd walk all day and at night they'd put us in some field so we could rest and then we'd start walking again in the morning. Those who weren't scared would go to people's houses and beg. I remember going to a house on the last day before we were let go. There was a German man there, but it seems that he was nice. He had some bread and cut us each a slice and also gave us sweets. We hid them so the others wouldn't take them from us and then joined the line again and kept walking. If we didn't walk, they'd kill us. One day it rained a lot and the Germans were calling to us to give us something, but none of us went. We felt like we'd just die then and there; we couldn't take it anymore. We were also covered in lice.”
Bega remembers coming to a village where part of the group was released and then to another village where the other half was let go. “We didn't know what to do or where to go. We found this big house; soldiers had probably been living in it. It had bunk beds and big heating stoves. We begged for clothing at the nearby houses and then lit the stoves with planks of wood pulled from the beds. Then we went down to the basement, where we threw out all our lice-ridden clothing.”
There were five Greek women in Bega's group; three were from Ioannina (two were sisters) and the other from Corfu. “We decided it was best not to mention that we were Jews, so we didn't. What happened as a result is that we were put in the same group as the workers who had gone to Germany, so we weren't brought back to Greece immediately. We were liberated in May, but did not come back until August 15, 1945. I remember the date, because there were flags everywhere,” Bega reminisces, referring to the Greek Orthodox holiday celebrating the Mother of Christ.